Baby face qualitative Evaluation

 
Baby FACE 
Wilder Research, January 2015 
 
Qualitative Evaluation 
9 
The majority of mine are college students; they are working at the casino. You have to squeeze it 
in whatever time they have to do it. 
They were interested [in participating in Baby FACE], but as time went on, they were just too busy 
to meet their time for their home visit. 
When they say they are not home, or that the baby has a doctor appointment or that they are sick. 
Then it is hard to reschedule sometimes. The challenge is when they know you will be there, but 
they are not home. We are told to always be consistent with our visits, showing up the same day, 
the same time, every time. But they are not there. That is challenging, frustrating. 
A big one, since I started, is never do [home visits] around the first of the month or payday. It is 
about being able to meet around what is convenient for them, because that changes all the time, 
with the working moms. 
Parent educators attempted to address this challenge by being consistent yet flexible about 
scheduling appointments, and finding creative ways to remind people of appointments, such as 
Facebook or connecting with other family members who may be able to remind parents of 
upcoming visits.
Lack of transportation and distance
In about half the sites (noted by six parent educators and seven supervisors in nine sites), lack of 
transportation and distance was noted as a challenge for both enrolling and serving families. It 
was difficult to go door-to-door for recruitment and home visits when families were dispersed, as 
parent educators had to spend a lot of time driving. This was further exacerbated when families 
weren’t home or didn’t answer the door and parent educators had to make return visits. In some 
cases road conditions made it difficult for parent educators to travel to visit families. Some 
families were not comfortable having parent educators in their home. Meeting families at public 
locations or having families come to town for Family Circles was challenging for families 
without vehicles or money for gas, and parent educators unable to transport families in their 
program-funded vehicles. 
Where we are located. We are at the school away from the central hub of the reservation . . . where 
people come to get all the services. If we were located there, I know we would have more people.
The parent educators have to go up to 45 miles, one way, to get to some of the families. 
There have been some problems in getting to the families, because they live in remote areas, and 
even getting there with the Jeeps sometimes is difficult, because of the weather conditions and 
because of the road conditions. 
Some people don’t want you to come into their homes for various reasons, so we will meet here or 
some other place in town, and many of them do not have vehicles, so transportation is difficult. 

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